Market Trends

Upfitting

The multitude of upfitting options and potential configurations makes it easy to fulfill Murphy’s Law, which states, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Unfortunately, in many cases, who triggers Murphy’s Law is the fleet manager who does not carefully review the upfit specs, or has not consulted thoroughly with the actual users of the equipment, or attempts to over-engineer the upfit. These are all avoidable mistakes.

There are a multitude of specialized fleet applications that require the installation of auxiliary equipment on a truck or in a van. What complicates the planning process is that there are as many ways to upfit a vehicle as there are chassis and body configurations. It is critical that you properly define a truck’s application to ensure the supplier builds the truck to meet its intended use.

One challenge for both the 2015- and 2014-MY has been the increased volume of fleet vehicles going to upfitters, which has resulted in capacity constraints. With the increasing demand and growth of the commercial truck and van segments – particularly among utilities and service industries – the percentage of upfitted vehicles is growing. Upfitters are feeling the pressure of increased demand.

Ergonomics and operator safety is a growing concern by HR and risk management departments, since there has been an uptick of workers’ compensation claims by fleet drivers. As a result of strong trends in the upfit market, there is an increased focus on designing upfits to enhance operator safety.

When used in the manufacture of truck bodies and van equipment, lightweight materials, such as thinner gauge high-strength steel, aluminum, fiberglass, and plastic composites, enable fleets to reduce vehicle weight to improve fuel economy, increase legal payload, and even drop down to a smaller (often more fuel-efficient) vehicle.

One challenge for the 2014-MY has been the increased volume of fleet vehicles going to upfitters, which has resulted in capacity issues. With the increasing demand and growth of the commercial truck/van segments, particularly among utilities and service industries, the percentage of upfitted vehicles is growing. Order-to-delivery time on large trucks keeps getting longer with upfitters. Some fleets don't place factory orders and instead purchase most their vehicle chassis from bailment pools.

Calendar-years 2014 and 2015 will be pivotal years for truck fleet management due to the discontinuation of long-time commercial vehicles and the all-new replacement models and upfit packages entering the market. This is prompting vehicle and equipment specification revisions from the perspective of fleet efficiencies and driver satisfaction. Here are the Top 12 trends.

The cliché in fleet management is that trucks are kept in service until the wheels "fall off." In many cases, this isn’t too far from the truth. Typically, the more expensive the asset, the longer it will be kept in service, especially units upfitted with expensive auxiliary equipment. However, as study after study shows, extended truck replacement cycles often have the unintended consequence of resulting in greater long-term expenses and degradation in worker productivity.

Upfitters are feeling the pressure from the increase in the number of upfitted vehicles requiring a ship-thru, which is overwhelming some installers and body builders. Also, many upfitter-related OTD issues are the result of OEM quality holds. Oftentimes, upfitted units are held at the body company due to limited storage space at the assembly plants caused by quality hold backlogs. This prevents the release of upfitted units into OEM traffic for final delivery via ship-thru/freight re-entry.